Shooter walks into jail, turns himself in

A man who walked into the Sangamon County Jail on Monday night, gun in hand, to surrender after allegedly shooting another man, already was on parole for a gun crime.

Sarah Antonacci

A man who walked into the Sangamon County Jail on Monday night, gun in hand, to surrender after allegedly shooting another man, already was on parole for a gun crime.

But the same man also was honored by the Illinois Department of Public Health in 1997 for rescuing and resuscitating a drowning boy.

Ricky Rogers, 32, was sentenced to 10 years in prison after a drive-by shooting in 2002. According to the Illinois Department of Corrections, he was released from prison on March 3, 2006, and was to be released from parole on March 3, 2009.

Rogers walked into the Sangamon County Complex at 11:05 p.m. Monday and knocked on the glass partition in the public lobby of the jail. He picked up a telephone to talk to a jail employee who was protected by the thick glass, but started talking so fast that the control-room operator couldn’t understand what he was saying.

Then, while still talking, Rogers allegedly pulled a black pistol from his pants and started waving it around.

The jail employee told Rogers to put the gun in a drawer that serves as a conduit for passing information from the public to employees behind the glass. Rogers did, and the control-room operator then closed the drawer, securing the gun.

Two deputies came into the room from the booking area and arrested Rogers, who said he had been told to turn in himself and the weapon but never said who told him to do so. The incident was recorded on surveillance video.

Rogers confessed to shooting a 19-year-old man about half an hour earlier, authorities said. The victim, whose identity has not been released, was taken by private vehicle to St. John’s Hospital with what police described as serious injuries. His condition Tuesday was not available.

Rogers, who is jailed on $1 million bond, faces charges of attempted first-degree murder, unlawful possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, aggravated battery with a firearm and aggravated domestic battery.

According to newspaper and court records, Rogers pleaded guilty to two unrelated gun charges in September 2002. In one case, three bullets were fired into a house in the from a passing car. Rogers later admitted he had been in the car, and the gun used in the shooting was found in Rogers’ mother’s house.

In the second incident, police raiding a house found a gun under a couch cushion where Rogers was sitting and fingerprints on that gun matched Rogers’.

Sangamon County records indicate Rogers was given 12 months’ probation for a gun charge in 1996, and that he pleaded guilty to resisting a police officer in 1997.

In addition to those incidents, Rogers was lauded by the state health department in 1997 for his role in rescuing a drowning 9-year-old boy from a Springfield swimming pool.

Rogers had just been released from the hospital after having burned his arm while working on a car. He was at his fiancee’s apartment complex when he saw that a boy in the complex swimming pool had been submerged more than two minutes.

Rogers jumped in, bandage and all, and pulled the boy out. He had learned CPR in a job-training program and spent about 90 seconds resuscitating the boy before he began breathing on his own.

Rhys Saunders contributed to this report. Sarah Antonacci can be reached
at (217) 788-1529 or sarah.antonacci@sj-r.com.